While assessment has become embedded deeply into the body of education, when it first appeared I suspected it would be yet another fading fad of the academy. I recall, through the haze of the years, thinking of a modification of the old saying and coming up with “those who can do; those who can’t teach; those who can’t teach assess.” Back in those days, many professors regarded assessment as something of a scam: clever assessment “experts” getting well-paying positions or consulting gigs and then foisting the grunt work onto professors. The wilier (or lazy) professors responded by simply making up assessment data and noted that the effectiveness of their fictional data was identical to that of the real data. That is, not effective at all. I, like many professors, found myself in brave new world of assessment.

I eventually got dragged deep into the system of assessment. At the start, it fell on me to complete the assessment work for Philosophy & Religion. In 2004 I was given an eternal assignment to the General Education Assessment Committee (GEAC) and then made a co-chair. This resulted in me being on all the assessment committees. As such, I now have some experience with assessment.

On the one hand, I do retain much of my early skepticism of assessment. Much of it still seems to be at worst a scam and at best a waste of time. There is clearly a lot of money to be made in this area, money that is bleed away from other areas. Assessment also eats into the time of the faculty, time that could be used for teaching or research. There are also good questions about the effectiveness of assessment—even assessment that is done properly and sincerely.

On the other hand, my reading of Aristotle and experience as a teacher has led me to accept that there is merit in assessment that is properly done. The good and proper purpose of assessment is to evaluate the effectiveness of education in classes and in the institution as a whole. This is entirely reasonable—as Aristotle noted in his Nicomachean Ethics, if one aims to become a morally good person, then one needs an index of progress. In the case of virtue, Aristotle used pain and pleasure as his measure: if you feel increasing pleasure at doing good and increasing pain at doing wrong, then you are making progress. Using this indirect measure (to use an assessment term) enables one to assess their progress (or lack thereof). In the case of education, there must also be assessment. Otherwise one does not know how well they are doing at the task of educating the students.

One mantra among the assessment elite is “grades are not assessment.” While this has been challenged, I heard this being repeated as an article of faith by experts as recently as this month (March, 2018). To be fair, there is some truth to this mantra. One obvious concern is that grades often include factors irrelevant to properly assessing the quality of work. Professors often grant extra credit that is not based on merit and such things as attendance and participation can go into grades. For example, my students can get +5 points added on to a paper grade if they turn the paper in by the +5 bonus deadline. If these grades were blindly used for assessment, they would be off. This, I agree, is a factor than can make some grades less useful or even useless for assessment. However, it is easy enough to adjust for many of these situations. For example, knowing that the +5 bonus papers have a +5 bonus would allow them to be easily assessed using the grades. What I do, of course, is assess the papers using the proper assessment rubrics—to avoid getting another lecture on why grades are not assessment.

Another obvious concern is that professors tend to be inconsistent in their grading. For example, the way I grade a paper is different from that of a colleague so that a paper I grade as an 84 might be graded as a 79 or a 90 by a colleague. Part of this can be due to a professor being a harder or easier grader; part of it can also be due to using different standards. While this is a concern, the same problem can obviously apply to assessment. Different assessors will be harder or easier in their assessment. While having a standard rubric can help offset this, the subjectivity remains whether it is a grade or assessment. Another approach is to have multiple faculty assess the same artifacts. While a good idea, schools are rarely willing to compensate faculty for this extra work—and assessing entire classes of work takes long hours.

There are also the concerns that some faculty are bad at properly grading work and hence their grades are not legitimate assessments. While it is true that some faculty are bad at grading, this is not a problem with grading but a problem with the faculty. Addressing the shortcoming would fix two problems: bad grades and assessment. There is also the fact that people can be just as bad at assessment, especially when people are assigned to assess work outside of their field. For example, an English professor might be asked to assess philosophy papers for critical thinking or an engineering professor might be asked to review biology lab reports for written communication.

In closing, much of assessment is (to be honest) ineffective and a waste of resources. But, it is beloved by many state legislatures and is part of the business model that now rules higher education. As such, it is not a fading fad. The challenge, then, is to turn assessment into something effective and useful—something I have been endeavoring to do.

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When the survivors of the Parkland school shooting became outspoken against gun violence, conspiracy theorists (and possibly Russians) launched the theory that they were crisis actors. In this context, a crisis actor is someone who pretends to be a victim of a crisis and does so in service to some secret power (such as the government, the liberal elites, or the Democrats). The crisis actor is, by their appeals to pity, supposed to help advance the secret agenda of their secret masters, such as destroying the Second Amendment and taking guns.

As with the false flags discussed in the previous essay, the claim that there are crisis actors presents an epistemic problem: how does one know if the person is a real survivor or an actor in service to a secret force? There is also the possibility that a person is a real survivor yet has been recruited to serve the secret force—but that is another matter.

When sorting out the matter of crisis actors, the same methodology used to address false flags should be applied: when writing about miracles, Hume contends that the certainty one places on the truth of any matter of fact should be proportional to the strength of the evidence. As such, the key question is where the weight of the evidence lies: for or against crisis actors. Naturally, each case needs to be considered on its own, but a general consideration is obviously possible.

When people allege that someone is a crisis actor, the usual evidence offered is photographic: the alleged crisis actor has appeared at the scene of multiple crises. As a method, this is certainly credible: if it can be shown that the same people keep appearing in widespread crises, then it would be quite reasonable to be suspicious of their involvement. However, the first step is to establish that the people are, in fact, the same people. Conspiracy theorists will usually find photographs that seem to support their claim: what appear to be photos of the same person at different crises. However, the photos tend to be relatively low-quality pictures of people with faces distorted by emotion and similar hairstyles. As such, the people in the images can look alike without being the same person. There is also the fact that resemblances between people are not uncommon, especially when the images are of people in the same age range. Snopes has done an analysis of one such case, nicely debunking the claim that the same woman is in all the photos. In the case of the Parkland students, it was claimed that David Hogg was a crisis actor because he appeared on the news in California. The conspiracy theory is that Hogg was pretending to be a high school student in California and is now pretending to be a Florida high school student. The problem with this narrative is that a person can, obviously enough, travel and be filmed or photographed in those places. Hogg really was in California, but not pretending to be a student. There are no doubt photos of most people in different places; this hardly proves they are pretenders—it merely shows they have probably been different places.

While investigating individual claims are important, it is also possible to due a general assessment of the likelihood of crisis actors. To use the example of David Hogg, he would have needed to establish a fake identity at Parkland. This would require that the other students, the teachers, the people in the community who allegedly knew him, and so on would all need to be active participants in the conspiracy. After all, if he was an actor, his cover would easily be pierced by a little investigation in the area—unless, of course, everyone was in on the conspiracy. Applying Hume’s principle, the issue is whether it is more likely that Hogg is a real student who survived a real shooting or that he is an actor and the entire town is in on the conspiracy. The simpler and more plausible explanation is, obviously enough, that David Hogg is a real student. The same sort of reasoning can be applied to other cases involving alleged crisis actors.

Humans endeavor to make sense of events by weaving narratives that match their world views. One result of this is the notion that some (or all) school shootings are false flag attacks rather than being as described by the mainstream media.

In this context, a false flag attack is when the attack is supposedly conducted by some mysterious force (such as the deep state) to advance some political goal (such as destroying the Second Amendment and taking away guns). In some cases, the false flag is alleged to be entirely false—it is claimed that there was no attack and the event is a fiction spread by the media and the force behind the false flag. In other cases, it is claimed that there was a real attack, but that the agents carrying it out were acting at the behest (wittingly or not) of this mysterious force.

From a philosophical perspective, these alleged false flags present an epistemic problem: how does one know that the attack is a false flag? As would be suspected, those that advance the false flag narrative tend to be rather short on actual evidence and long on suspicion and conspiracy theory. While a proper investigation would require considering each case, David Hume offers a general principle that can provide a guide here. When writing about miracles, Hume contends that the certainty one places on the truth of any matter of fact should be proportional to the strength of the evidence. I will apply this principle to the falsest of false flags first, the fictional attack.

Some conspiracy theorists, such as Alex Jones and James Tracy, claim that no one was killed at Sandy Hook. These conspiracy theories have been debunked by Snopes, but conspiracy theorists tend to double down in the face of efforts to disprove their claims. That said, it is worth considering the false flag claim in the light of Hume’s principle as well as using the standard inference to the best explanation.

Completely faking a school shooting would be a large undertaking that would require the involvement of many people. The fake parents, fake students, fake police, fake teachers, and so on would need to be in on the conspiracy and would need to maintain the façade in the face of years of investigation. School records, police records and so on would all need to be faked. There would need to be fake funerals with fake bodies. And so on for a massive conspiracy involve hundreds and perhaps even thousands of people. Given what we know about the ability of people to keep secrets, it is wildly implausible that such a conspiracy could occur and occur repeatedly, as the conspiracy theorists allege.

While it could be countered that the secret force behind the conspiracy has the power to engage in such massive fakery and maintain the fiction for years, this simply creates another problem: if this secret force is so powerful, so capable and so disciplined, then it should already rule the country, doing what it wants. That is the trouble with proposing such a force—it would have no need to remain a dark conspiracy when it could simply rule. The best explanation is, of course, that the shootings are not complete fictions. This, however, does leave open the possibility of a false flag that is not a fiction.

Other conspiracy theorists advance the idea that some or all school shootings are real shootings, but the shooter is acting at the behest of the secret force that makes such things happen. In this case, only the shooter needs to be involved in the conspiracy—either wittingly or by being somehow manipulated by the secret force. There is, of course, also the option that the real shooter is an agent of the secret force and then a patsy is put in their place, perhaps already dead.

Those arranging the attacks are supposed to be acting as architects of fear who hope to scare the public into backing attempts to destroy the Second Amendment and take away guns. These conspirators might be liberals who hate guns so much that they are willing to murder children, or they might be something else—there are various theories.

As before, the way to assess this claim is to consider the evidence that is available in favor of false flags. The obvious problem is that conspiracy theorists will tend to claim that any opposing evidence is the work of Them and they will carefully select their evidence to confirm their theory. A more objective assessment will indicate that the conspiracy theory is far less plausible than the alternative. After all, the conspiracy theory requires a secret force that can operate in an amazingly effective manner yet is somehow unable to achieve its alleged ends by other means. That is, it is both extremely powerful and extremely ineffective—which is an odd combination. If this secret force is alleged to have control of the state, then it should be able to achieve its goals. If it is not in control of the state, then there is the obvious question of why the state remains ignorant of its operations or choses to ignore them. Once again, the best explanation is that the alleged false flag operations are simply what they appear to be.

As discussed in the previous essay, the supreme court will be considering whether employees can be compelled to pay fees to public unions to cover the cost of collective bargaining. While the legal issue will be settled by money and the courts, my focus is on the moral issue of whether this is morally acceptable or not.

Proponents of unions advance the classic free-rider argument in favor of this compulsion. Public unions are generally required by law to provide services to non-member employees. Because of this, if employees did not pay fees to offset the costs of these benefits, then they would be exploiting the employees who did pay. This would be tantamount to stealing from those who paid. This argument is morally compelling, and this can be illustrated by the following analogy.

Imagine that a Lunch Group was formed by people who went to lunch together and this group provided lunch and other benefits in return for a membership fee. Now suppose that a law was passed that required the Lunch Group to provide lunches to anyone who happened to be in the same restaurant as the group when they had lunch. While this would be a great deal for any freeloader who happened along, it would not be fair for the paying members of the Lunch Group. Since people could get the benefits of the Lunch Group without contributing, the group would soon be destroyed: paying members would have little incentive to remain, outsiders would want to exploit the group and thus the funding would soon be exhausted.

Naturally, some of the free-riders might argue that they are entitled to the free lunch, but that they should not be expected to contribute to the group because they do not like the other benefits and disagree with the conversations held by the group members. They just want the free lunch. This is, of course, analogous to the free speech argument advanced in favor of not paying the union fees: the employees want the benefits of the union, but do not want to pay and justify this by claiming that they do not agree with the political views and activities of the union. However, this seems absurd.

The no-free lunch reasoning is normally very appealing to conservatives. For example, it is something of a stock conservative position that people who can work should work rather than freeloading on the social welfare system. They, not surprisingly, criticize people who exploit the system as free riders. This same principle should apply in the case of public unions: if free riding on others is morally wrong, then free riding on a public union is morally wrong as well.

Fortunately, there is an easy solution to the problem—one that is typically endorsed by conservatives: workers should be free to join the union or not and they should be free to pay the fees or not. But, if they elect to not pay the fees, then they should receive none of the benefits. Just as a business is not required to provide free stuff to people just because they want it, the same should apply to the unions as well.

If the law is going to compel unions to provide services to non-union members, then the law must also compel those people to pay their fair share. Otherwise, the state would be mandating the equivalent of free lunches, something that typically violates conservative principles.

Except, it seems, when it comes to busting unions. After all, a very effective way to destroy a union is to compel it to provide services for free. This will encourage free riding and will thus deplete the union funds to the point where the union is no longer able to be effective—something that would please many conservatives. It is thus somewhat ironic that some conservatives are using a tactic that explicitly violates a basic principle of conservatives to weaken and destroy unions.

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While public employees are generally not required to join unions, they are often required to pay fees to cover the cost of collective bargaining. A challenge to this practice is heading to the supreme court. While the legal issue will be settled by money and judges, there is also the moral issue of whether public employees should be compelled to pay such fees. As a point of full disclosure, I belong to multiple teacher unions. As such, this should be considered as a potentially biasing factor on my part.

One interesting argument against compelling public employees to pay these fees is based on an appeal to the right of free speech. As has also been argued in the courts, money is regarded as a form of speech. As such, a moral case can be made that forcing employees to pay union fees is a form of compelled speech. This is because unions, like corporations, use their financial resources to influence politicians and voters. A person who does not agree with the views expressed by the union is thus forced to “speak” on behalf of these views by paying fees (rather than union dues). Being an advocate of free speech and opposed to compelled speech, I do find this argument appealing. However, it does have some issues.

One basic concern is whether money should be regarded as speech/expression. While the courts have, so far, drawn a line at outright and explicit bribery, the logical conclusion of this notion is that if money is speech, then giving a politician money to do something is the same as trying to persuade them via other means. While it would be a slippery slope fallacy to insist that this view must lead inevitably to the legalization of bribery, proponents of the view have pushed through many other past barriers and now the sea of money is, metaphorically, eroding this last wall. As such, it is reasonable to worry that through a slow erosion money will gain even more of the status of traditional speech and someday what is now regarded as bribery will merely be legitimate persuasion. It can, of course, be argued that the bribery line can be drawn and held by claiming crossing the line would be harmful. But, so many lines have already been crossed by the flood of money that one should be forgiven for being worried how far the tide will go. As such, I am not a proponent of the broad idea that money is speech and that spenders should thus enjoy considerable freedom under this cover.

A second concern is that this same logic would seem to also apply to corporations. If it is morally wrong for employees to be forced to support a union whose views and activities they disagree with, then it would follow that it is also morally wrong for employees to be forced to support an employer whose views and activities they disagree with. For example, an employee at Hobby Lobby might not embrace the religious views and political activities of that company. While employees are not, obviously, required to write checks to their company’s lobbying and political efforts, the money generated by their labor does go to such activities. Just as an employee would make less income by being forced to pay fees to a union, an employee makes less income by being forced to receive less pay so that the employer can engage in lobbying and political activity. Naturally, this would only apply to employers that used business funds to engage in such activities. If employees are engaging in compelled speech by being forced to pay fees to unions, then employees are also engaged in compelled speech by having the money they generate being used to fund lobbying and political activities rather than getting that money in their paychecks. As such, if employees cannot be compelled to pay union dues on free speech grounds, then employees have the same right to demand that their money not be spent by their employer on activities they disagree with.

The way to respond to this argument is, obviously enough, to argue that there is a relevant difference between employers and unions. For example, it could be argued that people chose to work for companies and hence express a tacit agreement with their activities. After all, they can just get another job elsewhere. The easy and obvious reply to this is that the same would apply to people seeking employment where they must contribute fees to unions—if they do not agree, they can surely just get a job elsewhere.

It could also be argued that employers have special rights to compel speech that unions lack; the challenge would be to make such a case in a principled way. Merely liking employers and loathing unions would obviously not be a principled justification.

Considering the above discussion, if employees have a free speech right to not pay union dues, then they have the free speech right to refuse to allow their employer to use the money they generate for political activities they disagree with. As such, if employees can get the benefits of the union without paying the fees, then employees should have the choice of contributing some of their pay to the political activities of their employer or getting that sum in their paycheck.

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After the school shooting in my adopted state of Florida, the state legislature acted by proposing an increase in the minimum age for purchasing a rifle, a three-day waiting period on rifles, and a program for arming teachers. Teachers can elect to participate in the program and there has been some talk of providing financial incentives. Since Florida consistently underfunds education, this does have some appeal to poorly-paid teachers.

As would be suspected, pro-gun people and the NRA generally favor arming teachers while those who are anti-gun oppose it. It is also not surprising that many in the middle are not enamored of the idea of arming teachers. In general, teachers do not seem thrilled with the idea.

While people tend to line up on this issue in accord with their ideology, the matter should be given due consideration in as objective a manner as possible. I will endeavor to do just that, with focus on both the practical and moral aspects of the matter.

From a purely practical standpoint, the main question is whether arming teachers would make students safer. Under this broad consideration are various practical concerns. For example, one obvious concern is whether an average teacher who lacks military or police experience would be able to operate in a combat effective manner against likely attackers. On the positive side, school shooters tend to be inexperienced and untrained—as such, a teacher with some training would probably be equal or better in skill than the typical attacker in a school setting. On the negative side, school shooters tend to use assault rifles, and this would give them a firepower advantage (range, accuracy, damage and magazine size) over teachers armed with pistols. But, a pistol is still better than being unarmed.

As such, an armed teacher would be objectively better than an unarmed teacher in terms of engaging a shooter. But, the engagement would not be like a shootout in a Western, with both gunslingers facing each other across an empty space. It is likely the engagement would take place with students all around and this raises the concern that the armed teacher will miss the shooter and hit students. Even trained professionals tend to miss most pistol shots in an active engagement; a teacher with some basic firearm training will presumably miss more often. This leads to the practical and moral question of whether this engagement would make students safer than not arming teachers. The practical matter is an empirical question: would an armed teacher reduce casualties by either taking out the shooter or keeping their attention long enough to allow more people to escape or would they increase the body count by wounding and killing students with missed shots? We will presumably have some data on this soon.

The moral concern is probably best put in utilitarian terms: if there is a reduction in deaths due to armed teacher intervention, would this outweigh unintended injuries and deaths caused by the teacher? On the face of it, a utilitarian calculation would find the action morally good, provided that the teacher’s actions saved more students than not having an armed engagement. However, there is still the non-utilitarian moral concern about the possibility of teachers unintentionally killing or wounding students they are trying to save. But, on the face of it, I would be inclined to say that engaging a shooter would be the right thing to do, even if there are the inevitable unintentional casualties. [Read more…] about Arming Teachers